First, some background. According to Wikipedia, Vietnam “is one of the world’s four remaining single-party socialist states officially espousing communism.”

Yet according to a global public opinion survey from Pew Research, citizens of that communist nation are the world’s most pro-capitalist people. Asked to agree or disagree with the statement that people are better off in a free market economy, 95 percent of them chose capitalism.

And the nation with the third-highest level of support for capitalism is…drum roll please…China. So another communist-run nation has pro-capitalist citizens (as well as a few secretly capitalist officials).

Here’s a table with more amazing polling data showing the degree to which people in other countries support free markets.

The worst country, if you’re looking at overt support for free markets is Argentina. Only 33 percent of respondents agreed that a free market economy was best (gee, I’m shocked).

And Japan, Spain, and Jordan are the most anti-capitalist nations based on the share of respondents who disagreed with that notion.

Who would have guessed that the Italians, Brazilians, and Ugandans would be most supportive of low taxes? Or that the Germans, Jordanians, and Salvadorans would be most in favor of high taxes?

The German results are particularly odd. They have very high support for free markets, while also supporting class-warfare taxation.

By the way, the people of the United States also are confused. They support free markets, yet they also give a plurality to class-warfare tax policy. We’re not as mixed up as the Germans, but it still doesn’t make sense.

But Americans kicked you-know-what in one part of the Pew Survey. In questions designed to measure the role of individual achievement, respondents from the United States were far more likely than most to demonstrate a belief in the work ethic and the spirit of upward mobility.

Though there are some anomalies in this data. The Venezuelans (62 percent) surpassed America on the top chart, for instance, and the Colombians and Argentinians (78 percent) beat America on the bottom chart.

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5 Responses

“Nearly 70 percent of Labor voters in the United Kingdom would favor class-warfare tax policy even if tax revenues didn’t increase.” That tidbit reinforces my opinion that socialists are greedy and just want what others have worked for. I also find it depressing and alarmi
ng. If people in charge feel this way there is no way to use logic when you discuss policy. I thought humans were supposed to be evolving out of childhood.

The tax question isn’t asking for desired policy, it’s asking which would reduce the gap. And for that carpet bombing all populated areas would be most effective, but high taxes can come close. That doesn’t mean that it’s ever desirable to minimize the gap. As Margaret Thatcher pointed out, minimizing the gap requires making rich people poorer and at the same time making poor people poorer.

Those electorates that cannot muster growth that exceeds, or at least matches, average world growth, because their effort/reward curves are flatter, will simply perish into decline.

In the end, utility shapes morality.

Yes, the Swiss are the most admirable people in my view too. They are part of the old continent and, unlike Americans, they have had plenty of time to screw their country up. Yet they have not. But they are in a precarious situation surrounded by a hostile continent to which they stand as a thorny reminder that coercive collectivism does not work. When I look at Americans, I have little long term hope for freedom. They simply have not had enough time to figure out how democracy works. The Swiss have figured it out, yet, against all odds have abstained from flattening their effort-reward curves.